Tag Archives: death

April 28, 2012 · 2:06 pm

“There’s Nothing in It for You”–It Is All for God, Who Is Love

There was an old saying at the mission that rings true now some 40 years later.  “There’s nothing in it for you.”

I didn’t really understand then just how profound that simple statement was.  But Time is a faithful teacher.  And as I look now in the mirror and see a much more wrinkled image with a head laden with a heavy hoary frost, I take more time to contemplate the increasing fragility of my physical state.  It seems that the reality of my own mortality crowds daily into my thoughts.

In that mirror I also see in my own eyes how the years have neutralized the piss and vinegar that I was so full of back then in my 20’s and 30’s.

As my earthly frame grows weaker, that old saying–how that there’s nothing in this walk with God for you–rings truer.  It is making so much more sense now as I am staring down the time when I just may have to depart this old earthly body before Christ returns to this earth to set up His kingdom.

For, you see, in those younger years I thought that surely I would be alive when the LORD would come back.  Christ did say that “whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11: 26).  And, that “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mt. 16: 28).  Those destined not to taste death would have to be the generation of believers alive when He returned to earth.  Anyway, I always thought that I would be one of them.

But now, as the years tick on, and my body creaks with age more every day, I must take this into real consideration–this “falling asleep,” this “shuffling off of this mortal coil.”

And, yet, I now realize that God has this death of the physical body hanging over us for a reason.  We know that He gives life and He takes life.  Our very breath is in His hand.  And it is this impending destiny with dust that helps us understand the futility of living for one’s self.  The self just cannot see us through, for our earthly bodies must betray us, for that is the very nature  of the physical body formed of the dust of this planet.  The house of dirt was made for us by God on purpose not to last.  It is temporary housing.

God fashioned our bodies to be as ephemeral as butterfly wings.  He deliberately formed them to be fragile in hope that we might sense someday our own vanity before death came knocking.  As we see our bodies decay and crumble with age, He hopes that we will see the futility of living for the self.

Our fragility betrays our pretentious egos that always seem to shout, “Hey, everybody, seriously, I really am something!”  But that self-centered imagination breeds the ultimate deception, for “when a man thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6: 3).

And we have all been guilty of that thought; it is in the spiritual genes of old man Adam and his offspring.  Yes, we are initially made that way by the Creator in hopes that we would see the purposelessness of selfish thinking and be humbled so that we could all realize one truth: Every man is created for only one thing, and it is not for self-glorification; it is for God-glorification.

And if we are blessed to be chosen by Him to reveal this truth to, then we are coming much closer to where we need to be in our walk on earth before our Creator.

There’s nothing in it for you.  For everything in the vastness of the universe and here on earth is for God and His pleasure.  This is the great sticking point with natural-minded man, who earnestly believes that he is the center of the cosmos.  Secular humanism is the new many-headed false god.  “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me.”  Especially our self.

“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11: 36).  Breaking it down, all things are of Him; they came from Him, and through His creative power all things (including us) exist.  And in the end, all things are created by Him for His pleasure and glory.

For instance, Him delivering us from utter degradation and destruction, and us returning and thanking Him and telling others about His saving love and power–He loves that and gets glory out of it.

“All things were created by Him, and for Him” (Col. 1: 16).  But God does not become a pompous little jerk like natural man when he gets power.  No.  God is LOVE.  He created us so that He could bring us to a place spiritually, where His essence and nature (which is Love) could be multiplied–eventually to fill the whole universe with LOVE!  Our gratitude toward Him for our deliverance from sin is the fertile soil where the seed of Love can grow.

And God-in-human-form is our example and showed us the way.  Jesus (Yahshua) tasted death for us all so that we would not be banished to the dusty tombs of oblivion.  “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory” (Hebr. 2: 9-10).

That’s the plan.  It is all for Him, so that He may glorify those who realize that it is all for Him.  He will share Himself and all His glory with the overcomers, even to the point of sharing His throne with them (Rev. 3: 21).

It is all for the Creator.  When we turn that page in the book of our minds, then joy and serenity will overtake us, for we will have embraced the heart of God with arms of humility, born of His true nature, Love.

{For more on this subject, check out this article:  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/gods-endgame-where-this-life-on-earth-is-leading-us/ }

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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October 16, 2011 · 9:21 pm

Borderline Personality Disorder–Reaching Out to the Depressed–Christ and the Man-Who-Lived-in-the-Tombs-and-Cut-Himself

The other day I happened onto a blog by a person who says she has BPD–“borderline personality disorder and other mental illnesses as well.”  As I read her post entitled “I Am Worthless, Pointless, and Hopeless,” I saw how her condition was destroying her.  She confessed that she was contemplating suicide and showed photos of her cutting herself with a razor blade and yearning to end her emotional misery through taking her own life.

I immediately thought of the time that Christ encountered “a man with an unclean spirit, who was dwelling in the tombs.”  He was “always, night and day…in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”  Christ went on to cast the unclean spirit out of the man, who later was found “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.”  The man even wanted to go with Him.  But Christ told him to “tell them how great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you” (Mark 5: 1-19).

And so I was moved to write this comment to her post: 

My darling girl,

There is another way to end all the pain and misery besides offing the physical body.  The death of the old self, the old ego, the old nature that we were born with, that old blue monkey crouched on our shoulder, screaming in our ear to do bad things to ourselves and others–yes, that selfish old adamic nature must die–not the body, mind you–the old heart inside of us, the old spirit that we have always been–that must die. 

I searched for 5 years desperately seeking solace and was led to the pits of nothingness.  Then, miraculously, while I tripped out on “sillysideburns” one day, it came to me: The old self had to die, not the body…I studied all the philosophies and world religions and did not find out how it is done.  

But then,  a wise man, seeing my plight, told me, “You need to die with Christ on the cross.  Just let all the bad inside of you go, by revelation, up on that cross, and let your old selfish self die.  When He died, you died.  When He was buried, you were buried, and when you truly believe that He arose from the dead, then you will arise from the dead, too.  And you will  walk in a newness of life.  You can read all about it in Romans 6 in your Bible.”

“Why doesn’t the churches teach this?  Because I know they don’t.”

The wise man replied, “Most of them don’t have the truth about real deliverance from sin, which like a serpent, coils around our inner being and has us enslaved. But this truth whereof I speak will deliver you, once and for all.  You are enslaved for now.  Follow my words and you’ll be free from the bondage you are suffering.”

And so, after reading all the books from the East and the West with no surcease from the emotional pain I was experiencing, I did it.  And a complete change happened in my life.  The drink, the smoke (of all kinds), the obsession with music, the womanizing, the cursing, the depression, et al, left.  And it has never come back in all these 40 years. 

I hear your cry, little one.  Read more here on my blog, ImmortalityRoad.wordpress.com
You are not alone…  Wayneman

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August 27, 2011 · 5:55 pm

“The LORD Has Called Me from the Womb”–On My Cancelled Appointment with Death*

I almost died in a car wreck the other day.  I was on the four lane topping a hill, when I looked for just a half-second at the radio.  And as I crested the rise, something had me look up, and there the pickup truck was, moving slowly in front of me.  I swerved to the left  just in time to miss it.

The end of the trailer was the heighth of my windshield.  A decapitation would have been the way I went out of this world.

I immediately knew that a higher power wanted me to live some more days on earth.  I thanked God right there for quickening in me the impulse to look up.  I could not see the truck and trailer, but He did.  I got this sensation that God really was watching over me.

A couple of days later, I opened the Good Book, and it literally fell open to Isaiah 46: 3.  I started reading: “ “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth.  Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Wow!  I looked in the mirror at my gray hair, and thought, He has always had His hand on me.  I flashed on some of the close calls with death–the Viet Nam War days of hell, when the mortars stopped their ungodly loud footsteps just before they fell on me–the times in my youth when I drove drunk all over the road and somehow did not kill myself or anyone else. 

And then I realized that He has held on to me since I was conceived!  He not only knew me, but has protected me and lifted me up since my conception in my mother’s womb!  He has carried me since my birth into this cruel old world.  And, yes, even to my old age, gray hair and all, He is still sustaining me.  For He created me and He promised in this passage of scripture that He would carry me.  “I will sustain you, and I will rescue you.”  He really has all my life.

Then I looked again and saw that this passage is written to many other people, not just to me.  He is saying this  to the whole House of Jacob and all who remain of the House of Israel.  I know through my studies that the House of Jacob/Israel consisted of all twelve tribes.  And that ten of those tribes were lost after they were carried away captive around 700 B. C.    And I know that the Savior Himself  700 years later said that He was sent to these “lost sheep of the House of Israel.”  The apostle James writes his letter “to the twelve tribes scattered abroad.”  I also know that the other two tribes were Judah and Benjamin, who were the Kingdom of Judah, and that they were not lost. 

The point is that God knows us from our beginnings.  He knows us personally, and He has sustained and helped us our entire lives–for a purpose–His eternal purpose.  Now we must fully believe this His love for us, and we must seek out just what purpose He has for us. 

His kingdom is literally coming to earth.  Christ is the King of kings.  He is “bringing many sons unto glory.”  Of course, He will look after them from their conception.  He has a plan for them.   KWH

*Isaiah 49: 1

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June 14, 2011 · 12:25 pm

Eulogy for My Mother

[I spoke these words at the graveside service]

My mother passed away June 6, 2011.  Louise Billups was 85 years old.  For those of us who knew her, we lost a great treasure and a walking, breathing example of love, caring, and kindness, not only to her family and friends, but even to strangers.

I remember the time about three years ago in August, Mom and her husband Marion were riding back from town and saw a poor elderly man pushing his delapidated bicycle loaded down with all his worldly possessions up Whetstone Hill on Highway 60.  She said, “We gotta help him.”  So they went home and returned fifteen minutes later with a quart of good old homemade southern sweet iced tea and a sandwich for the man.  That was my Mom.

There’s an old proverb in the Bible: “It is better to be in the house of mourning than the house of mirth and laughter.”

I’ve often wondered why?  Because when a loved one passes away, we mourn for them. Our hearts become broken. The Bible also states that God is near to them of a broken heart. He is that invisible Spirit of Love that penetrates the cracks of our broken hearts and heals us and helps us. God can only get closer to us if we are humbled.

And a death of a loved one humbles us. And so God is near.

We are gathered here now to pay our last respects to a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a dear and kind friend, and most important, to our spiritual sister in Christ. And spiritual is the key. For the loved one that we all now mourn was a kind and loving spirit who inhabited this earthly body laying before us.

But this today is not the end. The Holy Scriptures says that we shall see her again–not in this old body but in a new, wonderful, everlasting spiritual body that will look like her in her vibrant prime.

We will see her again, for Christ has promised a new body for his followers upon His return to rule this earth for a thousand years. And so, let us take solace that her present pain and suffering has at last ended and her spirit now rests in God’s bosom. Without this truth, we wander around lost in not only sadness for this departed soul but in the solemn inevitability of our own mortality. Our resurrection with Christ upon His return is our only hope to escape the dusty tombs of oblivion.

But now today, we all have lost a priceless treasure in her departure, and that is Christ’s spirit of love actually walking around in another human being. That was my mother and spiritual sister in Christ.

My mom left us here on earth a few days ago. Her spirit went back to the Father who created her long ago. All that remains now lying here is her earthly body, a temporary vessel that God provided her to love through. Mom manifested the love of Christ by giving all to others.

And yet we can’t help but mourn the passing of this dear one, my very own mother, the vessel God used to usher in my entrance into this cruel old world. And she nourished me on her knee with warmth and food and milk and ran with me through the grass and held my hand as I grew up. And most importantly, she fed me the milk of God’s word which nourished my embryonic spirit within me when I was just a little boy.

And that Word she shared with me stayed with me. “Train up a child the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I strayed in my youth far from the Lord, but those words she had shared about Him were like a fish line and hook in my jaw that the Great Heavenly Fisherman held and kept reeling me into His boat, slowly but surely.

That was the kind of mother I was blessed with, who never gave up on me, even as I squandered my youth on drink and smoke. But she was always there to encourage me. For her testimony was such that on the very hour that I came into this world in that hospital in Long Beach, she had a vision from God that her son would serve Him.

I am her lasting legacy, for we share the same light and same truth: That there is but one God. That the Great Spirit of Love, the Creator of heaven and earth, came down and walked among us and sacrificed that vessel so that we all could be redeemed from the wasted wreckage of a sinful life… She knew God by His original Hebrew name–Yahweh–that in His name is power and healing and answers to prayer…that He is returning to this earth bodily to establish His government where He, the Christ, will rule and reign in the Kingdom of God, literally here on earth…that He is coming soon, after Satan sets up a counterfeit one world government…and then, the good news, Christ returns and begins His reign over all earth…

These and many more things my mom believed, and I will miss those hours of fellowship studying the Word together….But now we must put her body back into the earth from whence it came. But we are not burying her, for she is not here; she is a spirit now at total peace with her Father.

So help us, Father, through this time of passing. I pray not for my mother, for she is with you. Instead, I pray for all of us who are still on our journey back to You. Be with us, O God. Help us, for we are weak and need your strength. Give us all eyes to see and ears to hear your truth. Thank you. We ask in your name, Amen.

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June 27, 2010 · 7:52 pm

How the Old Self Dies–Baptism into His Death

We may not realize it yet, but we are blessed, for we have seen that our old self needs to go.  Many try to redirect or re-channel its activities.  Sometimes we try to clean it up, but He wants it to die.

He said to repent and be baptized in water.  Yes, water baptism is a symbol of something else, yet we should still do it.  But few know what the real baptism is.  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Messiah Yahshua were baptized into His death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Messiah was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Rom. 6:3-4. NIV.

Going down into the water is a symbol of the mortal life we now live in this flesh.  Coming up out of the water is a symbol of the new spirit-being life we shall live which is the immortal life that we are called to.

Water is a symbol of our mortality.  Our first physical birth is an immersion in a bag of water.  We are born of water.  We mortals are about 75% water.  We  begin  in  our  mother’s  womb in water.  During water baptism we are baptized into His death.  To live in this mortal body is to die.  This watery entombment we call a body is really a deathtrap.  It by its very nature has to die.  The Messiah’s earthly body was composed of the same watery stuff that our bodies are.  And He died.  He had to die by reason of the nature of his shell during His earthly tenure.  This watery, flesh and blood body cannot inherit immortality and go into the kingdom of the Eternal One.  To be made of water is to be mortal, to be awaiting death, for water is extremely unstable, subject to every whim of nature’s forces.

To sin is to die.  Mortality is to be able to die.  Therefore, our mortality is to sin. Sinning insures a human of not receiving a new spiritual heavenly body.  But now He has enabled us to live a life where we do not have to sin, if we receive His Spirit.  Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust (desires) of the flesh (this old mortal body). Gal. 5:16. NKJV.

He was made to be sin for us

We, then, when we go under in water, are symbolically being immersed into this watery mortal state of sin with Him.  We “are buried with him by baptism into death.” Rom.6:4. God calls those things that are not,  as though they were.  We are dead already (Yahshua told the disciples, “Let the dead bury their dead”).  He calls it before its actual physical death when we consent to and experience it (in revelation).  The water is the symbol of our earthly mortal bodily state.  This spiritual death of our old self comes now in this revelation before the fruit of death comes to our earthly bodies.

In conjunction with this, few know that the Messiah, the day of His death, actually became sin for us—he who had never sinned.  He was the sacrificial  Lamb who was set to be sacrificed  before the world ever came into existence.  God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. II Cor. 5:21. NIV. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Rev. 13: 8.

The levitical priest, in types and shadows, laid his hands on the sacrificial goat, thereby transferring Israel’s sins upon it.  So did the Father place all of mankind’s sins upon the body of Messiah.  When He died, the body of sin died; our sin died that day.  To whom is the arm of Yahweh revealed?…Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all…It pleased Yahweh to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see His seed. Isa. 53:1,6,10.

We make the Lamb’s soul an offering for our own sins by realizing that it was us in our sinful state hanging on the tree that day.  We must be immersed in this knowledge.  We must believe that our old self—that old monkey on our back, that old demon that we were, that selfish, egotistical, self-absorbed, sorry excuse for a human being—that old thing that we were is now, in God’s eyes dead.  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin. Rom. 6: 6.

[This is ch. 28 of my book, Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality, which you can find at the top of this page.  Just click “Ebook…”]

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October 7, 2009 · 12:58 pm

Receiving Immortality and Overcoming Death, Our “Last Enemy”

The saddest, darkest, and most hopeless day is to believe that when we and our loved ones die, then that’s it; there’s no tomorrow.  Death is our “last enemy.”  And Death stalks us, and our minds scurry away from it.  Our mortal condition haunts us and causes us to at times run and hide from having to think about Death.

But God has made a promise–that all those who believe in the Savior will be rewarded in receiving immortality.  This is our hope (1).    Our day of adoption into this immortal realm is when we receive our immortal spiritual bodies in the future on a certain date (2).

Many of His followers will have to face the fact that their earthly bodies will expire before that glorious date comes (3).  The encouraging part is that He has given a portion of His Spirit to them.  They carry His Spirit within their mortal bodies.  And with it, they not only “put to death” old deeds of the flesh, but also bear spiritual gifts to the unenlightened–to help them enter into the truth.

For His promise to us is that even if we die this earthly death before that certain date in the future, He will grant unto us a new immortal body and with it everlasting life.  So whether we die or whether we live on till He come back, we are assured in our hearts, when we believe that He will do what He said He will do in granting us immortality.

He grants unto us His mortal believers His Spirit, which is a down payment, a kind of spiritual earnest “money,” if you will, until that day (4).   We then wield the Spirit as a sword, cutting off every thought of minds that come against the truth.  Every grudge, every insincere gesture, every fear do we deal a death blow.  In so doing, we shall have an abundant door provided unto us to enter His Kingdom of the Immortals (5).       Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Romans 8: 23-24
  2. Romans 8: 15
  3. II Cor. 5: 1-4; 4: 7
  4. II Cor. 1: 22
  5. II Peter 1: 11

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June 26, 2009 · 11:52 pm

The Manifested Sons of God–Overcoming the Law of Sin and Death

The scriptures speak of a special destiny for certain human beings who overcome the pitfalls of their carnal mind.  And the world is waiting breathlessly, waiting for these rare individuals to appear on the scene (1).

They are called the sons and daughters of God, for God is their spiritual Father–not in word only, but in power.  For they will have changed at their core; “old things are passed away” in their new shining life.  They will have picked up The Book and just believed it and walked in it, and they will change history.

The End of the Carnal Mind

The apostle Paul saw their day, which all signs tell us is our day–the latter days.  He saw a group of individuals who through faith would walk the way Christ walked this earth–in purity of purpose, in honor and integrity.  The way they would do this is by receiving a new spirit–God’s Spirit into their hearts.  God’s Spirit will lead and guide them.  Consequently, they will be called the true children of God, for those “who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (2).

These offspring of the Most High, who dwell on earth today, will overcome being carnally minded, which is death.  For “the wages of sin is death” (3).  Therefore, the carnal mind stems from a heart that sins.

The Old Heart

This old heart is the spiritual condition that a person is born with.  It is the core center of natural man Adam and all his earthly offspring.  This old heart is the well from which the mind draws up evil selfish thoughts by the bucket fulls.

Without a spiritual heart transplant, one will continue sinning.  Temptation arises, and like a bull led by a nose ring, the natural carnal minded man and woman succumbs to the temptation.

The Law of Sin and Death

And hereby hangs a law, as inexorable as the law of gravity.  It is called “the law of sin and death.”  It is quite simple to understand.  If you continue in sin and sinning, you will die.

But someone will say, “Well, we are all going to die eventually anyway, so what is the difference?”

Yes, “it is appointed unto man once to die.”  The first death will come for the vast majority–the death of our physical bodies (unless we are alive in Christ when He returns and we are changed).  But it is the “second death” that we need to be concerned with.  For it is the snuffing out of any memory of us and the hope of life in the next dimension–the era of the immortal ones walking on this earth.

So natural man is strapped with his old sinful nature, and try as he might, he cannot rid himself of it in his own strength.

But God has provided a way to escape this hellish condition–a way to be freed from the inevitability of this “law of sin and death” (4).

There is another Law that negates the sin and death law.  It is called “The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.”  Receiving His Spirit “makes us free from the law of sin and death” (5).

The children of God will go through the “cross experience” whereby the old heart we are born with will be surrendered up.  A spiritual death will occur as they identify their old self with Christ, who was sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,” through which God “condemned sin in the flesh” (6).

And all this is done in us when we just believe it.  This spiritual state of being “right with God” is when He dwells in us and keeps His own laws in us.  When we walk in accordance with His Spirit, we do not break His Ten Commandment Law (7).

A chosen few, the future manifested sons and daughters of God, called the elect, will experience the above.  They will go deep and answer the “high calling” and make their election sure (8).

These are the sons of God, shining as lights in a dark and “crooked and perverse nation.”  Again, we must ask ourselves, Are we one of them?   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. Rom. 8: 17-19
  2. Rom. 8: 14
  3. Rom. 6:23
  4. Rom. 8: 1-5
  5. Rom. 8: 2
  6. Rom. 8: 3
  7. Rom. 8: 4
  8. Phil. 3: 14; II Peter 1: 10

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January 30, 2009 · 12:36 pm

A Broken Heart and Spirit–The Sacrifices of God

The death of someone close to us brings a broken heart and a broken spirit.  There are no braggarts at a funeral–no loud boasters in the “house of mourning.”

I thought of this at Lindsay Stout’s funeral. She was my student, just beginning her senior year.  She died in a one car crash about three years ago now.  I remember that she was just  lying there in front of the church, pale and joyless.

Her mother wanted me to speak that day.  “You were her favorite teacher.  She talked about you all the time.”  But it was difficult to look at Lindsay that morning.

I was broken when I rose to speak.  I told them how blessed I was to have spent some 800 hours with her in the classroom.  Three years of Spanish, two years of English.  I read her last essay that she had written and a poem that I received in a dream about her the night before.  In the poem I re-assured them that we would all see her again at the resurrection.

Death Brings Brokenness and Humility

We were all broken that day.  Death has a way of doing that.  It brings  humility, compassion, and mercy to the heart.

How does death do this?  The Spirit of God uses the dead body to speak to us of our own mortality and the futility of this earthly existence.   In this environment, we are humbled, for we know that we cannot say to our own bodies, “Live on forever,” and they obey us.

It is at this very moment of humbleness that God can enter and be close to those who are brokenhearted.   It is just a shame that it takes the death of someone close to us to get “close to God.”

The scripture says, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psm 34: 18).  God is near them.  He can approach us when our stiff pride is wilted.  The reason that it “is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth” is because hearts in mourning are broken hearts, and God is near to them.  The invisible Spirit of God is palpable to those with a broken heart.

The Point

Do we have to literally have someone close to us die in order to get a broken heart and thus be close to God?  No, for He has provided a better way for this to happen.  We can carry around in our hearts “the dying of the Lord Jesus” and let His physical death break our hearts and spirits.  This is how we “show forth His death till He come.”

Paul wrote that “we are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of Him might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4: 11).  We think on the Savior willingly giving up his earthly life for us and allow His death to break us, preparing a place for Him to enter.  “Death works in us” [bringing God’s presence], but life in you [His presence in us gives His life unto others around us]” (v. 12).

“The Sacrifices of God…Broken Spirit, Contrite Heart”

This brokenness (through Christ’s death) becomes the only sacrifice  that God will accept.  It is only our broken heart that shows Him our sincerity.  A broken spirit is the only sacrifice we can make to Him that He will receive.

Everything else that we could offer Him, He already owns–money, houses, cattle.  For “the earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof.”  What He wants is our broken heart because He wants to be able to come down and dwell in us and be with us more fully.  But first, somebody has got to get broken to provide the environment for His visit.

Yes, our bodies are the potential temple of the Spirit.  But He will only come to dwell in us if we are humble and broken.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

For more check out my books by clicking the link “Yahweh Is the Savior” in the Blogroll in the right column, or going here:  http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/

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July 12, 2008 · 5:12 pm

“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Love Is All We Owe

     We owe mankind only one thing–love.  In the “Lord’s Prayer,” Christ is teaching us that loving others is all that we should owe anyone.  As the princes and princesses of the King, we are held to that high standard.  Owe no man any thing, but to love one another (Romans 13:8).

     God the King is Love, and we His children are born of His nature, which is love (I John 4:8, 16).  Loving others, then, is how we pay our debts. 

     So when the Savior, in teaching us to pray, tells us to say, “And forgive us our debts,” He want us to mean this: Forgive us Father, for the times we didn’t love others the way You love them.  And when Christ instructs us to say, “As we forgive our debtors,” He wants us to mean this: Father, grant us a forgiving heart to all who do not love us as You love us.  He did tell us, “Forgive and it shall be forgiven you” (Luke 6:37).

     To love one another–this is one of the “new commandments” Christ gave us.  “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).

     Loving one another is the sign that God resides in us.  “If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (I John 4:12).  The caveat: we cannot love one another with the agape “love from above” if we do not have His Spirit within us.  Human love will only stretch so far and then it snaps ugly on somebody. 

     Love is the fruit produced from the sap (Holy Spirit) within us, the branches.  And we cannot be grafted in to the vine (Christ) until we go through the death, burial, and resurrection experience with Him {Read more on this in my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God at   http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonsintro.htm }.  We must be “raised to walk in a newness of life” through faith in God’s promise to give us a new heart and a new spirit if we put to death our old sinful self on the cross with Christ (6:1-6).  When we receive His Spirit into our hearts, then the love will start flowing down and through us to others (See post, “Love From Above, Down and Through” at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/love-from-above-down-and-through/ ).

     The “debts” spoken of in the “Lord’s Prayer” is much more than money or material things.  It is spiritual love that we owe each other.  We owe mankind a heart of love in gratitude to God for the love He showed us by providing the Sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and thereby giving us a way to escape sin and corruption.  It is now about Him channeling Himself (Love) through us on out to others. 

     These things should be in mind when we pray to our Father, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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May 27, 2008 · 5:24 pm

18th Surgical Hospital Quang Tri 1968–Remembering a Tragedy

I didn’t find his name at the Wall last Sunday.  Although I was with him his last seconds on earth, I never knew his name.

We ran him in on a litter into the receiving ward at 18th Surgical Hospital at Quang Tri that summer of 1968.  He was pale from heavy loss of blood.  He looked to be about twenty, thin with sandy hair.  They all seemed to be thin and about twenty.

We got him on a table.  The nurses started cutting his clothes off of him.  And there it was–a blue little mouth of a bullet entry hole in his abdomen.

“How did it happen?” someone shouted.

“They said he was packing to go home tomorrow.  He was putting the pistol in the bag when it went off.”

The surgeon appeared at the table.  He examined him for an instant, then he cursed and yelled, “Gimme some adrenalin in a big syringe.”  The nurse handed it to him and, he cursed again and stabbed the young man in the middle of his chest pushing the clear fluid into his heart.

He worked like a whirling, sweating madman for another minute or two.  He pushed on his chest and issued a dry crying curse under his breath with every movement.  I should have been drawing some blood in order to cross match some for him, but I just stood there staring into the doctor’s eyes the whole time.  All of us just stared at him and not the patient, for we all knew that we could do nothing until hope sprang forth from the face of the doctor.   And it didn’t.

The doctor said nothing.  He turned around and went to the next table where a young thin man was writhing in pain.  I looked down at the young man with sandy hair.  His face was a powdery greyish white color, his skin cold.  I turned around and went to the next table to draw some blood.  And that was the last time I ever saw him.

I thought upon this tragedy as I slowly and reverently walked by the Wall.  I read many names who died hoping to somehow get back to “the World.”  Maybe I read his name today.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock, Spec. 4/ Medical Lab Tech/ 18th Surgical Hospital / Pleiku, An Khe, Quang Tri, Vietnam, Sept. 1967-Sept. 1968

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